I suppose it had to happen one day.
I don’t know about you, but I knew it would come
Sooner rather than later.
You have been my best friend since forever
But best friends aren’t clones
We all change, grow – apart and together
So we don’t like all the same things anymore
It shouldn’t matter
So I don’t think we need to tell each other everything
That’s called keeping a core of ourselves hidden
For us alone
I guess I realised it early on
That I couldn’t really tell you everything
And couldn’t really tell you everything
But isn’t that normal for everyone?
I used to think being perfectly open and honest was everything
But now I feel some things need to be kept hidden
Or just not said
Because perfect honesty doesn’t have to be the be-all
And end-all of life
There are some people you shouldn’t be honest with
Because it’ll just come back to bite you in the ass
Not that I think you’re that kind of person, mind
But I don’t think you’re open enough for perfect honesty
And neither am I – I guess
So as long as we always have each other’s back for
the really important things
That’s the bottom line
For why we are still best friends

How did I spend at least a whole 45 minutes in your company and not feel all emotional?

To have a pleasant civil conversation without me going to pieces?

I guess this is another marker in moving on?

I’m happy and sad at the same time. Happy that I got to spend that little time with you, to actually, finally, after wanting, hoping for it for the longest time, to have an extended conversation with you, even if it was all about you and you never really had me on your mind.

Sad that I could actually deal with this without going to pieces. Sad that this means I don’t seem emotionally held hostage by you anymore. Sad that I’m actually ok enough to have plastic conversations with people who pretty much never gave a real damn about me.

I’m happy you seem to have things figured out, with a clear focus of what you want of life, in your life. But I still wish, I still hope, you will one day be ready for me to say the things I really want to say.

Maybe the beauty of moving on is being able to hope for what could be without it being blind hope.

Or as Andy Puddicombe, former monk and author of ‘Get Some Headspace’ and website Headspace.com, puts it:

“It’s letting go of what we want it to be, and moving closer to acceptance of what is happening right now.”

It’s challenging trying to keep my weight strictly to between 70 and 75 keys. Somehow it keeps fluctuating. Right now it seems I’m 77. On the one hand I feel I should stop angsting about it and be content as long as I’m healthy. But on the other 73 is a nice acknowledgment of achievement and represents a happy middle in the band. Will try harder over the LNY hols.

So I finally decide to visit the Substation for the Temporary Repositories exhibition, on an atypical, overcast, gloomy sort of Sunday afternoon. The air is cool and it’s actually chilly in the air-conditioned buses. I take one that brings me on a nice long ride.

I’m surprised I haven’t visited the Substation sooner, although there’s a nagging feeling I have, for some Irish film festival a long long time ago. I don’t know. I can’t remember.

Anyway, the film showcase was fascinating just because there’s so much one could watch – mostly studies done by film course students but also a few familiar names now mainstream and famous in the local filmmaker sense. I caught a kitschy propaganda satire, large bits of a Martyn See docu, a colleague’s humorous short about two hapless out of work stockbrokers turned would-be robbers, and Kelvin Sng’s homage to Wong Kar Wai and Teresa Teng featuring a former student!

All in all, a good few hours spent on a dreamy deary Sunday, before getting back to the I&Is.

According to Socrates, we must:(1) Strengthen Our Souls;I see this as finding ways to fortify myself internally. It’s only natural that many times, from daily wear and tear, our inner wills get eroded, as we attempt to contend with the loads of negativity that occur naturally around is. So this for me is about rededicating, reorienting myself daily so I don’t veer off course.

(2) Speak The Truth;For me, this is about two things: courage and phrasing. It takes guts to tell the truth but even more guts to make the effort to find affirming ways to phrase it. Not every knife needs to be sharp to pierce the heart. I admit phrasing is something I’m still working on, how not to go for the sting right at the start, but to catch flies with honey, as they say.

(3) Think for Ourselves;For me, this is more about taking responsibility for the choices I make, rather than about what conventionally would be perceived as following the crowd. I think too many times I neglect to accept responsibility for my choices, my actions, my feelings. Taking responsibility is to think carefully before committing to an action, but once I’ve done it, I have to live up to and with it.

(4) Ask the Right Questions;Right Questions are the ones I usually avoid asking, because I don’t like the answers I already know deep down. So that’s something I need to take note of. Also, Right Questions don’t have to be academic questions, but moral questions that may ultimately have no clear answers.

and (5) Grow With OthersEven if it’s my destiny to be alone, ‘Others’ also means the people around me – my colleagues, my charges, and the small circle of people whose counsel I value and who, one way or another, inspire me to better action. And this means collective, not individual progress. Too often we race ahead and forget about taking others with us, to say nothing about leaving people behind. JW is right about being grateful about the relative downtime now, but I can’t wait to get started on building my learning community this year.